Accompanying Lydia

The freedom of women in the west contributes significantly to the flourishing of economic life here. I’m not sure whether or not this notion has been statistically verified, but it is my hunch; namely, that even though women in North America and western Europe are far from being fully or fairly empowered, I suspect that they experience relatively fewer encumbrances toward the pursuit of their vocational and life aspirations than they once did, and fewer than others in many places around the world. It therefore follows that if developing countries and communities desire to grow their economies, they will need to find increasingly more venues for and avenues toward female participation.

I’m proud of the way Lutheran World Relief works in emerging lands to gather the hopes and the dreams of all, to give space especially for women, like Lydia, that she might render the sort of leadership I witnessed in Indonesia. Rather than being invidious toward family structures, or invasive toward local cultural contexts, the accompaniment model suggests that we work with and walk with those communities to help them give birth themselves to the miracle of their new way of living; very much like the way the Word became enfleshed in John 1:14.

Lydia Siahaan is the enfleshment of a transformative leader of a Lutheran World Relief partner agency, YSSI (Yayasan Solidaritas Sesama Insani). Her life patterns the biblical prototype of her name’s sake in Acts 16, that mercantilist, church-founder. Though separated by millennia, these women of faith are much alike: well-networked, entrepreneurial, compassionate, and passionately invested in their communities. The loan business of YSSI is like a mission. It’s directed toward those who lost everything that fateful tsunami-Sunday.

Cheng King Long and her husband, Kiulung are two beneficiaries—two heroes, really, who welcomed us into their humble home. Their walls and ceiling are corrugated sheet-iron and plywood. Their living spaces are divided by old shirt-sheet partitions. But because of a micro-loan from LWR/YSSI, they were able to build back what they lost in the tsunami, their tofu business. Additional income has come from the initiative of their daughter, Alehim, who provides tutoring to younger students. Because of Lydia and YSSI and our partnership with them, they have enough money now to move into a new home… much sturdier and safer.

Even more ironically, and perhaps strangely because of the tsunami, Alehim’s dreams may be realized in ways that they were not for generations of millions prior to that dreaded event. You could tell this by the way she took command—her intensity, her pride—as she permitted me to look over their loan repayment schedule. They haven’t missed a payment and are now half way toward full repayment. But I’d say they’ve already traveled the longest journey, the road toward the restoration of their family strength and the acquisition of a new domicile for refuge.

“God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.” Psalm 46

Hope Crushed Beneath a Boat

(Now that I'm safely home and gearing up for a Christmas and family mode, this and the next blog entry are reflective of this awe-inspiring expedition to Asia.)

Even though I, like many others, was glued to CNN’s tsunami coverage in December 2004 and even though I’d heard from colleagues their vivid reports of the devastation, the scope of that disaster escaped me until it was most graphically driven home by this surreal thing I saw on Wednesday, December 12, 2007. The wave reduced a huge, 3600 ton ship to the equivalent of a child’s toy. Think of the weight of 1800 automobiles, like the one in the embedded photo of Dr. Lisa Bonds posing diminutively beside that boat in Banda Aceh. This floating power station was carried on a killing path 3 kilometers in-land. Entombed beneath this massive steel vessel are people; their homes and their earthly hopes crushed forever.

That’s why it’s so important for us to continue to build the infrastructure of Indonesia, because, frankly, I worry about another earthquake that could induce another tsunami. I really want the people I saw and spoke with, especially the children, to be better prepared than they were the last time. “Geography has dealt Indonesia a wild card: Nowhere else do so many live so close to so many active volcanoes,” (Andrew Marshall, “The Gods Must Be Restless” in National Geographic, January 2008: 49).

Traditional Acehenese Architecture

In Kuala Bubon, near Meulaboh, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America is working with partner Yakkum Emergency Unit (YEU) to help local builders follow traditional methods constructing new homes for tsunami survivors. LWR worked with this community to create a community develoment plan and is now working in the same community to assist with rebuilding livelihoods.

Fertile and Fragile

We flew this morning to meet with project partners in Meulaboh. This region is days away from marking the third anniversary of that once-in-a-century tsunami that thrashed Indonesia, killing 120,000 persons and leaving 500,000 without homes. But Indonesians are never more than moments away from the next potential disaster. On average, there is an earthquake a day, vastly more here than anywhere in the world, while many of these are minor tremors, our earth is frightfully alive. Seventy five active volcanoes foment in this parlous and perilous place they call "the ring of fire." Deep, shifting underwater events make another tsunami inevitable.

Ironically, this tumultuous topography also provides soil for stunning, verdant fertility. That's why one of the first places I will go when I return to Monique and Baltimore is a local florist. During these travel trips I've decided I must be surrounded with more plants, more growing things in my life, especially in my home and my office. Green is not only delightful to the senses, it's good for the soul. The longest season of the church-year is adorned appropriately in such verdure.

Every season in Indonesia is both fertile and fragile. That's why Lutheran World Relief has made a 10 year strategic commitment here. Our LWR delegation will see tomorrow the steps taken to help rebuild lives in Kuala Bubon. Arguably, there is one thing even more crucial than recovering from the disaster of 26 December 2004; it is developing this community so that these fisher folk will be less vulnerable when our living planet makes its next mighty move.

No Lines at 10,000 metres

During last evening's flight from Davao City, Philippines to Singapore, I asked in jest, LWR's supremely competent Asian Area Deputy Director, Joanne Fairley, to look down from her window seat. "Do you see the equator?" "Not yet," she replied. But 10 minutes later she burst out playfully, "It's right there and it's red." Of course, there are no lines at 30,000 feet (what most of the world calls 10,000 metres). In fact, there are no lines dividing nations either. Nor any maplike, color-coded countries.

I've heard a few U.S. Lutherans complain that too much focus goes internationally, that Bishop Hanson or President Kieschnick or the church bodies focus too much on world issues, "we need to take care of home first!" I guess it depends on how you define home, or how you answer Jesus' answer to the ancient inquiry, "Who is my neighbor?"

So what does neighbor mean, why does it matter that we work with Lutheran World Federation, the International Lutheran Council, Ablaze International, or Global Missions. Martin Luther has a 10,000 metre answer, "Christians live not in themselves, but in Christ and in their neighbors, or else they're not Christians. They live in Christ through faith and in their neighbors through love."

I'm a little parched with all this travel. When we land in Medan, Indonesia later this Lord's Day, I'll be looking for spiritual refreshment, for a Lutheran church where my faith can be formed and my love can be informed by the Gospel. I, for one, really hope there's been some global Lutheran focus there so that I can find one.

At the Center of What Matters

I write as our drive divides in half the southern major island of the Philippine archipelago, Mindanao. We wend our way on an eight-hour, snakelike, cliff-side, southern-ward drive.

Cars must negotiate the corn spread out on the road by harvesters who actually prepare for milling by drying out their yellow produce in one of the lanes of this two-lane road.

The highway is carpeted with corn because that’s the only way poor farmers can make useful their source of livelihood. I wish I knew more about agricultural production, but I’m elated that we work with partners who do.

Today’s drive, in fact, has my mind in overdrive considering a contradiction. I’ve been seeing a place so lush, nearly paradisiacal, but it’s a place where human flourishing is so stunted. Every kind of green thing grows here, yet something is awry in this garden.

The majority of the population is banished from enjoying the fruits of their hands, the growth that God gives to the land. Whatever the reason, whatever “serpent” is to blame, whatever tricks or politics have entrapped the two indigenous communities we’ve visited, that’s not what matters most.

What matters is that access to health services and prenatal care for mothers is painfully unavailable. What matters is that children must work in fields rather than do the schoolwork which would work in the best interests of their future. What matters is that a military struggle that won’t go away has diverted the attention of farmers. One transformed man who has laid down his weapons and taken up farming tools in a new way of life took the time to tell me that he didn’t even understand why he was fighting, but that every family in his community was forced to give up one son to enlist in a local military group.


What matters to me is that I’m part of an organization working for peace at the epicenter of what matters. Lutheran World Relief is right here at the center of what matters. Faith is alive and put into action in the form of new farm machinery and appropriate farm technology. Gloria’s father can now make a viable living so that Gloria is the first in her family to go college. I hope that her degree in political science goes a long way in helping design new structures of peace in the Philippines.

God gave up his Son in the ultimate human struggle. He is our Advent hope. Jesus Christ’s birth, death and resurrection reverses the curse of Eden in ways that matter today, in ways my own eyes are seeing enacted 2000 years after Bethlehem. Hope lives here in the Philippines even amidst ugly despair.

Today we drive north and east toward Davao City. Thanks for praying for us and with us as we go.

Fiesta Class or Siesta Class

After 60 hours of traveling due to plane mechanical delays and weather detours, the very first thing our Lutheran World Relief group did upon arriving in Manila, Philippines, was catch a flight to Cagayan de Oro. These “light and momentary” middle-class inconveniences, however, were made slightly more humorous, not more bearable, when our in-country plane seated us in what people in the U.S. might call Economy Class, but they euphemistically labeled as Fiesta Class.

I was awakened an hour ago, at about four a.m. local time, from a deeply disorienting, fully comatose sleep, by the motorized sound of the air conditioner, which I mistook to be the roaring rumble of an airplane. That’s a first! I thought my bed was Siesta Class.

May we look at, learn from, and listen to our partners…via car.